Peter Cooper On Music: Sheryl Crow fine-tunes her country sound

Singer and songwriter Sheryl Crow poses for a portrait in promotion of her upcoming album, "Feels Like Home," on Friday, Aug. 23, 2013, in New York. (Photo by Dan Hallman/Invision/AP)

Crow is among that lot of people, and “Feels Like Home” is neither a tentative toe into the country pool nor a nostalgic nod to classic, California-country albums like The Byrds’ “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” or Linda Ronstadt’s “Heart Like a Wheel.”

The new album is a full-on dive into the contemporary country deep end, co-written with Music Row pros including Paisley, Luke Laird, Chris DuBois, Natalie Hemby and Chris Stapleton, co-produced by Nashville vet Justin Niebank and featuring Tammy Wynette-ready lyrics like “Thank God they make waterproof mascara/ ’Cause it won’t run like his daddy did.”

Crow came to Nashville after a breast cancer diagnosis, determined to put down roots and live a life far from the bustle of her former homes of New York and Los Angeles. Sister Kathy Crow Pagetta lived here, and Crow had already witnessed Music City’s plethora of world-class musicians and studio spaces. She’d also witnessed the extent to which Tennessee celebrities can live in something approaching unmolested normalcy, at least when compared to the paparazzi-heavy coasts.

“One of the grandest things about living here is getting to be in my line of work, and getting to have my kids and myself have a normal life,” she says. “Celebrity is tantamount in Los Angeles, and it’s not here, and I think celebrity and fame have done a disservice to artistry. In this community, family is the most important thing, and privacy rates way up there. I don’t think the community here would allow something like paparazzi everywhere.”

When Cash recorded Crow’s “Redemption Day,” he called her to talk about the song’s inspiration and meaning. Carter Cash opened up to Crow about her life in music and her experience as a budding actress working with James Dean, Peter Fonda and others. And Harris and Crow shared numerous stages.

“Emmylou was a great role model for me,” Crow says. “She was always strong and gorgeous, yet one of the guys, and she was her own entity but was also associated with Gram Parsons and Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark and John Prine. In recent years, her songwriting has just been astounding. She gives me and other women a lot of hope, and something to strive for.”

Getting personal

When it came time to create “Feels Like Home,” Harris and the Cashes were of less immediate influence than Paisley and other contemporary hit-makers. Crow was intrigued by learning to write in a different way, and she went outside of her comfort zone to embrace today’s Music Row style.

“In the past, I’ve had the liberty of leaving some things very esoteric,” she says. “One thing Brad Paisley said was, ‘You already write country songs. But you can’t leave any line in a song up for interpretation. Let’s make every story super-tight, and in the first-person.’ I wanted to learn that craft. You can sometimes hide behind a character you create, but this time it was ‘I, me, my.’”

Crow is enamored of her Tennessee life of kids, horses, song swaps and creativity. She’s hoping “Feels Like Home” will be embraced by radio programmers, but if it isn’t, she’s feeling nothing in the way of desperation.

When off the road, she’s been working in an East Nashville studio with producer Eric Fritsch, recording demo versions of songs for a Broadway musical collaboration with Barry Levinson, based on his movie “Diner.”

“There are so many unbelievable musicians in this town, it slays me,” she says. “In all these years in this business, I’ve been missing out on this. It doesn’t exist anywhere else. It’s such a joy to live here."